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25
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uccess rarely comes to someone who is not sure
of himself. We need to develop a vision that is
promising to unravel our full potential. Admitting
defeat means you lose the will to surmount difficulties. ‘Fall
seven times, stand up eight times’, goes an old Japanese
saying. Recall how Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to
climb Mount Everest, refused to admit defeat when he failed
the first time. On May 29, 1953 he scaled successfully the
highest mountain then known to man though he had failed
in 1952. Soon after his disappointing effort in 1952 a group
in England called him to address its members and as Hillary
walked to the stage amid thunderous applause the audience
clearly saw a man who had attempted the impossible. But
Edmund Hillary saw himself as a failure. He moved away
from the microphone and walked to the edge of the platform
and making a fist he pointed at a picture of the mountain and
said in a loud voice, “Mount Everest, you beat me the first
